Wasted: Romelu Lukaku has his head in his hands after missing a chance in Southampton's 2-0 win

Martinez's men remain just a point behind the Gunners, who play Newcastle on Monday, but, even with only two games in the season remaining, Martinez is not giving up hope of a top-four finish just yet.

He told BT Sport: 'Not at all, from our point of view it doesn't change at all. We have had eight wins in 10 games, that's a phenomenal return and allows us to go into the next two games trying to get maximum points.

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'We are working towards the biggest points tally that we can get and at the end of the season, we will see where that takes us.

'You cannot underestimate the good run that the team has been in. Today was a real setback, but we'll learn from this. We're still a very young group, the amount of changes we had to make made it extra difficult today, but we'll be ready for next Saturday.'

Everton's backline was largely makeshift, with first choice centre-halves Phil Jagielka and Sylvain Distin unavailable, and, while Martinez took heart from the improvements his defence showed after going two goals down, he admitted his team could not respond to the setback.

'I think it's quite clear the two goals we gave away were very, very rare to see in a game. From that point on, we got a affected a little bit. We got a bit frustrated, we weren't our normal selves,' the Spaniard added.

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'We were unfortunate today in the way we conceded the goals. After that we came a little bit stronger in the second half, but we never had that confident look that we normally have to get that goal that would have been a good opportunity to get back into the game.

'Everything that could have gone wrong defensively, it did, and it was very difficult from that point on.'